Contagious

The light flashed red.

“It works,” Margaret said. “Clarence, the test works.”

“Fantastic,” he said. “I’ll let Murray know immediately. He can rush the testers into production. Great job, Margaret. That finally gives us what we need.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said. She had grown rather fond of Clarence’s voice in her ear as she worked. He stayed in the computer control room, managing any requests she had, listening in to her and Amos theorizing as they cut up infected bodies.

Gitsh tapped her on the shoulder. “The sample’s up on the screen, Margo.”

She turned to look at the large flat-panel monitor mounted on the wall. She hadn’t designed the trailer, but the monitor was her idea. Looking into microscopes was kind of annoying—routing them to a big plasma screen let everyone see what was going on.

The screen showed what she expected—the red, pink and white of highly magnified flesh and blood vessels, along with the gray of decomposing matter and the black of cells that were already long since destroyed by the apoptosis chain reaction. Only about 25 percent decomposed: the best sample she’d had yet. Even so, she didn’t have long.

“Okay, boys,” Margaret said, turning back to the table. “We need to work quickly.”

Anthony used scissors to cut away the boy’s yellow pajama bottoms and the T-s.h.i.+rt, leaving his bent body naked on the table.

“Caucasian male, approximately six years old,” Margaret said. “Severed spinal column, ma.s.sive blunt-force trauma.”

Even before cutting into him, she could see that the boy’s internal organs were smashed to h.e.l.l.

“One triangle on the stomach,” Margaret said. “Heavily damaged, lowest priority. One on the front upper-right thigh. Intact. Highest priority. Turn him over, please.”

The a.s.sistants flipped the little corpse. Now his broken body angled to Margaret’s left instead of to her right.

“One on the lower back, just above the eighth thoracic. Completely destroyed. Lowest priority. No other triangles visible on the body. Flip him back and let’s give him the injection series. Maximum dosage. I’ll take the right thigh.”

They gently put the corpse on its broken back again. Marcus laid out six large syringes, each with a long needle sheathed in hard plastic. Margaret carefully unsheathed the first syringe and went to work in the area around the triangle.

As soon as the

Margaret had tackled that problem in working to save Perry’s life. She’d performed immediate surgery on him to remove any trace of the dead triangles rotting inside his body. That hadn’t stopped the apoptosis, but it slowed it, giving her enough time to find a solution.

Apoptosis is driven by proteins called caspases, also known as the “executioner” proteins. Caspases exist in every cell in an inactive form, but when cells are damaged or old, the caspases activate and kill the cell. In a normal person, other proteins known as inhibitor of apoptosis proteins, or IAPs, shut down the process as soon as the intended cell dies. The triangles corrupted this normal process by neutralizing the IAPs’ suppressive abilities, allowing the caspases to spread the deadly chain reaction to surrounding cells, which then released their caspases, which then destroyed more cells, and so on.

She’d fought this process by testing multiple drugs that inhibited caspases. The magic formula turned out to be a trial drug called WDE-4-11, which successfully shut down the apoptosis chain reaction. That saved human tissue, although the triangle corpses still decomposed within hours.

That meant she could operate on a live hosts, remove the triangles, then use WDE-4-11 to stop the apoptosis. Despite Perry’s naive, violent beliefs, she could save them. When she did, however, saving the tissue was only one step—she also had to deal with the mental effects. For that she had a battery of mood-controlling drugs at her disposal, including drugs that had tackled the chemical imbalances in Perry’s brain and returned him to a semblance of sanity.

Or so she’d thought at the time.

She focused her attention on cutting the triangle free from the dead boy’s leg. The human tissue would keep, but the triangle would be black ooze in only a few hours, and she needed to move fast.

MEAN DRUNK

Dew parked the Lincoln in front of Perry’s motel room. Fluffy snowflake cl.u.s.ters had replaced the rain and hail. As the saying went, if you don’t like the weather in Wisconsin, just wait ten minutes. Dew had heard the same kinds of jokes about Michigan, Ohio and Indiana—and they were all true.

Perry sat in the pa.s.senger seat. He’d pa.s.sed out with a beer in his left hand, his right still wrapped around a tattered six-pack that had only two bottles left. Dew didn’t want to act as a chauffeur for this psycho piece of s.h.i.+t, but he wasn’t about to put someone else at risk.

“Wake up,” Dew said.

Perry didn’t move.

Dew put the Lincoln in reverse, backed up about five feet, put it in gear, then gunned it and jammed on the brakes. Perry’s big body lurched forward against the seat belt.

His head snapped up, and he blinked in confusion.

“Home sweet home,” Dew said.

Perry turned and looked at him with drunken eyes. “Thanks, Pops,” he said.

Dew said nothing. Perry stared and smiled for a few more seconds, seeming to wait for a response. He didn’t get one. When he got out, the Lincoln rose up at least six inches. G.o.dd.a.m.n, but that kid was big.

Dew shut off the car and got out. His room was right next to Dawsey’s. Just like always.